The first real news is that we can expect to hear an announcement from Redmond about the it before March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, at which time we should learn the name of the device. At the same time, we should also learn other launch specifics, and here’s where it gets incredibly juicy; our source says that, pending FCC approval, the specter-like Zune Phone will hit the streets sometime in May, a full month before the iPhone.

No, really.

Which company’s already-created phone will Microsoft rebrand as their own?

RU SIRIUS: You make quite a prominent point about the fact that Over-Clocked [Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present — his new collection of short stories.] is available for free under a Creative Commons license. You also write about the good experience you’ve had with this, as a writer who does want to get paid for his work. Do you think this good experience is universal? Do you know if this has been studied at all?

CORY DOCTOROW: Well, I don’t know that anyone’s done any kind of systematic study. But my anecdotal study finds that everyone I know who’s tried giving away free books as a way of selling printed books has done it again with their next book. So, I think that’s a pretty good sign, right? It worked well enough for people to do it a second time. I guess the definition of insanity is doing something twice and expecting a different outcome. Presumably people were happy with that first outcome.

RU: About how many people do you hear from who are doing this sort of thing?

CD: At least ten or fifteen writers who’ve done this with their novels. And, of course, a lot more musicians. In a certain sense, I kind of live in the bubble of people who’ve done this, right? I mean, all my friends are the people who have done this. But it seems like it works pretty well. And that makes a certain amount of sense, especially for printed material. My thesis regarding printed material is that the basic thing that keeps people from getting long-form works off the screen isn’t the screen quality — it’s that computers are really distracting. It’s really hard to concentrate on one thing for a long time while you’re sitting in front of a computer. So as a result, I think people who get a novel over the wire tend to read some of it and get distracted. But they like it well enough that they’re willing to go out and buy it and read it on paper, which is a lot less distracting.

I haven’t been paying attention to the Sony Reader since my initial series of posts about it. One thing I had wanted to do is to try to convince writers to create some free stuff for it as a way of attracting new readers to their work. Well, look at what that strategy has done for Doctorow!

The only “gotcha” with using the Portable Apps suite is ensuring you save your work in a file format compatible with the software you use on your PDA. At the very least, you can also share music, pictures, HTML pages and text files: Music can go in /Audio, pictures in /DCIM, and for most handhelds with Documents to go, you can put text files (which can be edited by any computer or software including DocsToGo) in /PALM/Programs/DXTG. HTML pages can be accessed from anywhere on the card using file:///path/on/card in the Blazer address bar. Blazer puts things it’s downloaded in /PALM/Blazer/Download/, so you know where to look for those files.

I have to admit it. I miss my blog. It wasn’t a mistake to end it. Even dead, it’s gotten over 395,000 views as of the last day of 2007! But I miss having a blog. Wait. What? Yes! That’s it! I’ll do a new blog!

Update: As of August 16 2008, when I happened to peek in here, the fake Rolling Stone magazine cover I’d created was shown to be expired. Expired?!!? WTF is that?! How absolutely stupid is that!? FAIL! I should have done a screensnap. If I knew this was going to happen, I would have — and […]

I never thought I would write this. And it has to appear here. Because it’s about Girls Don’t Cry. They no longer exist. They’ve disbanded. They’ve quit. Girls Don’t Cry as they were on June 21, 2007: Sora An, Rachael Cornick, Hannah Fairlight, Liz Kelly, Caitlin Gray Don’t Quit! Charles Bukowski Having failed to hold […]

It was one year ago today I started this blog. Now this: This blog is now over. No more posts. No updates. Nothing. You got what you didn’t pay for, now you’re not getting it any longer. And that is that. I reserve the right to totally delete this blog at some point of my […]

September 2007 Contents From first post to last – September 2007 subhead: Ah, You want to know why I hate you today! — Charles Baudelaire August 2007 Contents A Post-iTunes Fable For NBC Quote Of The Day: Jobs Rulz, Gates Luz Ohhhhhhhkay Jff Zukr: Ur No Gneeiz No Jeff Zucker: He Don’t Do Emo Newsflash! […]

Hear, Hear Americans should not fear talking–and listening–to those whose views we loathe. [T]his has been our history: to let all speak and to fear no one. That’s a good history to continue. This is brilliant.